Purdue Expert Urges Parents
to Prepare Children for Disasters
Children will be better
prepared mentally and emotionally for a natural or manmade disaster if parents
speak with them in advance about the threats in a realistic but calm manner,
says a Purdue University child development expert. Myers-Walls
says it is important to increase everyone's awareness, but when preparing
children to deal with threatening situations, it is vitally important to neither
focus on nor feed fear.
http://webclipper.handsnet.org/2007/09/purdue-expert-u.php
**Civic Engagement/Philanthropy
Civic Engagement in Camden, New Jersey
Perhaps more than most cities,
Camden, New Jersey, has suffered from the declining fortunes
of urban centers in the United States in the past half-century. The steady
exodus of middle-income residents and businesses that started in the postwar
years has left the city with concentrated poverty, falling property values,
a dwindling tax base, and inadequate resources to cover the city's basic costs
and services. Recently, however, Camden has been at the center of private
and public redevelopment activities and reforms that seek to transform the
city's landscape, create local and regional housing and employment opportunities
for its residents, and position Camden to be an important participant in the
region's economic development activities.
http://webclipper.handsnet.org/2007/09/civic-engagemen.php
Now to Really Tackle
Discrimination: The Government We Deserve
The Urban
Institute reports that Louisville is back in the news these days because
its plan for integrating schools, like Seattle's, was overturned recently by the
Supreme Court. However divided is opinion over this decision, it should force
us to look more deeply into what a well-integrated society means and requires.
Public debate should range far beyond the use of race as a factor in determining
which kids can go to which schools.
http://webclipper.handsnet.org/2007/09/now-to-really-t.php
**Community Development
Civil Legal Aid in the
United States: An Update for 2007
According to the Center
for Law and Social Policy, since 2005, the civil legal aid system in the
United States has seen some very positive developments,
including increased funding and new efforts to improve quality and access.
Still, most areas of the country lack the funding and available pro bono assistance
to provide low-income persons who need them with legal services; as a result,
many low-income persons who are eligible for civil legal assistance are unable
to obtain it.
http://webclipper.handsnet.org/2007/09/civil-legal-aid.php
**Economic Security
What's up? Not Income
and Earnings.
Historically, typical families
could expect to see annual increases in their earnings to help cope with financial
challenges, improve their standard of living, or just save for a rainy day.
According to analysis from the Economic Policy
Institute, in an alarming reversal of past progress, real household income
for the typical family has declined over the last seven years. Despite increases
over the prior two years, median household income for 2006 (the last year
for which data are available) is still $1,043 below its peak in 1999.
http://webclipper.handsnet.org/2007/09/whats-up-not-in.php
The Real Technology Challenge
Growing the U.S. economy and maintaining its global economic strength
depends on developing the new breed of technical and non-technical workers
who can work across national, organizational, and cultural boundaries. The
best competitiveness policy would focus on strengthening basic education,
on the performance of those at the bottom, on providing a broad-based education,
and on developing a cohort of cosmopolitan scientists and engineers who will
give the U.S. collaborative advantage.
http://webclipper.handsnet.org/2007/09/the-real-techno.php
**Education
Busting the Myth that
Poor, Urban Schools Can't Succeed
With the first bell of the
new school year about to ring, a new book from the Urban Institute Press spotlights
how urban schools serving low-income minority students can shine. In each
area, the grade schools studied have the same demographic profile and the
same union contracts and other district constraints, so the researchers could
uncover the characteristics, policies, practices, and activities that make
a real difference in early educational performance.
http://webclipper.handsnet.org/2007/09/busting-the-myt.php
Ninth-Grade Attendance
Rates Predict High School Graduation
What are the best predictors
of whether a ninth-grader will graduate from high school on time? Attendance
and grade point average, according to a new report, What Matters for Staying
On-Track and Graduating in Chicago Public High Schools: A Close Look at Course
Grades, Failures, and Attendance in the Freshman Year, by the Consortium on
Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago. Nearly 90 percent of freshmen in
Chicago public schools who missed less than
a week of school per semester graduated within four years.
http://webclipper.handsnet.org/2007/09/ninthgrade-atte.php
Education's Best-Kept
Secret
According to the Urban Institute,
we know that the most important in-school influence on student performance
is teacher quality, and the difference between the results that the best and
worst teachers get in the classroom is staggering. The students of the ablest
teachers show about a year and a half gain in tested performance annually,
compared with only about a half-year gain for kids stuck with the less competent
teachers. However, few school districts and states link student test performance
over time to individual teachers.
http://webclipper.handsnet.org/2007/09/educations-best.php
Evaluation of Flexibility
under No Child Left Behind
According to the Urban Institute,
the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act as amended
by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 relied on
two notable policy instruments to improve education: accountability and flexibility.
Accountability is perhaps the most recognized and discussed feature of the
legislation. As a strategy for improving education, it calls for establishing
challenging standards of performance. One of the broadest forms of flexibility
introduced in NCLB is the Transferability authority.
http://webclipper.handsnet.org/2007/09/evaluation-of-f.php
$27 Million in Readiness
and Emergency Management Grants Awarded to 32 States
The U.S. Department of Education
announced the award of more than $27 million in grants to 91 school districts
in 32 states to help them enhance and fortify their readiness and emergency
response management plans. The Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools
discretionary grant program provides funds for local education agencies to
improve and strengthen their emergency management plans. As part of the No
Child Left Behind Act, local school districts must provide assurances
that they have plans that outline how they are working to keep their schools
safe and drug free.
http://webclipper.handsnet.org/2007/09/27-million-in-r.php
**Health
More Americans, Including
More Children, Now Lack Health Insurance
Analysis from the Center
on Budget and Policy Priorities highlights that between 1998, the year
the State Children's Health Insurance Program was implemented, and 2004, the
number of uninsured children fell every year. But since 2004, as the availability
of funding for SCHIP expansion has tightened and as a restrictive Medicaid
policy enacted in early 2006 has taken effect, progress in enrolling uninsured
children in SCHIP and Medicaid has stalled. With employer-based coverage
continuing to erode, the number of uninsured children under 18 has jumped
by 1 million over the past two years --- from 7.7 million uninsured children
in 2004 to 8.7 million in 2006.
http://webclipper.handsnet.org/2007/09/more-americans.php
Study Finds Medicare's
Drug Benefit Substantially Increased Coverage Among Seniors
The share of seniors without
drug coverage dropped significantly under Medicare's new drug benefit, according
to a Health Affairs Web Exclusive article based on a Kaiser Family Foundation,
Commonwealth Fund, and Tufts-New England Medical Center survey. Seniors with drug coverage
from any source were less likely to face high monthly drug costs or to skip
prescribed medications due to cost than seniors who remained without drug
coverage. However, seniors who enrolled in a Medicare Part D plan did not
fare as well as those who relied on other sources of drug coverage, such as
employer-sponsored coverage or benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs.
http://webclipper.handsnet.org/2007/09/study-finds-med.php
**Nonprofit Management
Effective Nonprofits
Reach Beyond Their Own Organizations
According to an article
in the Fall 2007 issue of Stanford Social Innovation
Review, the most effective groups are those that are able to go beyond the
scope of their organization and serve as a catalyst for broad social reforms.
The article, "Creating High-Impact Nonprofits," by Heather McLeod
Grant and Leslie R. Crutchfield, is based on the authors' forthcoming book,
"Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits" to
be published this October by Jossey-Bass. Grant
and Crutchfield identify what they described as six myths of nonprofit management,
including the belief that brand-name awareness and large budgets are critical
if an organization is to succeed.
http://webclipper.handsnet.org/2007/09/effective-nonpr.php
Balancing Uses and Sources
of Charitable Funds
Independent Sector and other
institutions serving and monitoring charities have been giving increased attention
to how charities can more effectively achieve their charitable purposes. Even
if there were no outside pressures, the community of consultants and advisers
to charities would seek to find ways to measure success by more than sustainable
budgets or outputs such as meals served or babies delivered. All those efforts
at one level or the other raise the important and sensitive issue of measurement.
http://webclipper.handsnet.org/2007/09/a-method-for-me.php
**Substance Abuse
AAAS to Develop Science-Based
Teaching Tools on Underage Alcohol Use
Efforts to halt underage
drinking often focus on peer pressure and the prevention of risky behaviors,
but the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is undertaking
a new federally funded project to give middle-school children a science-based
understanding of what can happen to them if they use alcohol. The three-year
project, called The Science Inside Alcohol, will
incorporate recent advances in neuroscience that have been shedding new light
on how alcohol affects the body.
http://webclipper.handsnet.org/2007/09/aaas-to-develop.php
